By R. Neal.

Goes to AC.

There will be an article about it:

About a week and a half after Hurricane Katrina ripped through New Orleans, Eddie Compass, the city’s police superintendent, went on national television and promised there would be no guns allowed in the Crescent City. Police, he said, would confiscate all guns.

When the policy was implemented, it set off a hot controversy. Gun owners said the police were violating the Constitution’s second amendment guarantee of the right to bear arms. Some of the gun owners were members of the National Rifle Association and complained to the organization.

The NRA sued, Baton Rouge attorney Dan Holliday representing the organization in the action in U.S. District Court. Federal Judge Jay Zainey agreed with the NRA and ordered the city to stop seizing guns and to start giving the guns they had already taken back to the rightful owners. The city ignored his order.

The city kept taking guns, even though officials denied it. The NRA wasn’t going to let go of the issue. It wasn’t just that it was guns. This was also a property rights issue. Many of the guns were cheap guns, but even those were worth hundreds of dollars each. Other, more expensive guns were also taken. The NRA dogged New Orleans on the issue, filing a contempt of court suit in February 2006 and eventually forced the city to allow them to examine the cache of confiscated weapons. That happened in April 2007.

In the upcoming August cover story for the NRA’s million-circulation magazine, America’s First Freedom, local author and NRA member Gordon Hutchinson and co-author Barb Baird reveal what the NRA observers found: barrels of illegally seized guns, mostly handguns, many damaged or rusted to uselessness.

John B. made some bling selling guns at some gun buy backs in Chicago. Go read. I found this interesting:

Given that Chicago Police reportedly now receive one vacation day and a $300 bonus on their paychecks for each gun they confiscate, I was very cautious.

And:

I had just sold $10 worth of scrap plus maybe a $50 5-shot .22 “affordable” wheel gun for $1000! It seemed too good to be true!

Heh.

So, Rudy Giuliani has accused the Democrats of wanting a nanny government. This came from Rudy Giuliani. Yes, that Rudy Giuliani. You know, broken windows, war on porn, gun control, and supporting questionable domestic surveillance Giuliani? That guy.

Update: Via insty, comes this:

What mayor was it again who installed those hectoring recordings in New York cabs that kept telling you to buckle your seat belt? I forget his name. I think it’s the same guy who cracked down on jaywalkers and street peddlers.

Looks like Ted Stevens home got raided. He might be corrupt? Who knew? Les Jones thinks it was about tubes.

It’s kinda telling that I categorized this post as humor. I guess if I took our political system seriously, it’d be too depressing to deal with.

CZ posters. W00t.

Or you could just buy an air rifle.

Look, no comments. Told ya. We win.

Update: Oops, forgot to turn off trackbacks though.

About Brady Blog commentator macca. Probably. Sebastian says he’s figured out who Macca is. But he ain’t telling. The hints are there so Macca will know. Any way, it once again proves there’s not much grassroots on the other side. Mmm, interesting.

Gunner asks me if I know what this is:

No clue. Bueller?

Here’s more info on the Kwan case:

The ATF did two things here during this case:

1.) ATF examined every gun in his inventory [by flying out a firearms technology branch expert]. Many were forwarded to FTB for further “testing”. The ATF took a semi version of the M-14 and the ATF, not Mr. Kwan and made a machine gun out of it. The ATF claimed it was a machinegun because it was made from a MG, “once a machine gun always a machine gun”, and that it was also “readily restorable” as well, and it only took a small arms expert, in a government research facility about 30 minutes to make it fire full auto.

2.)The ATF later added a superseded charge of an un-registered Short Barrel Rifle because Mr Kwan had a Heckler and Koch VP-70 model M [machine gun], with factory “Holster/Stock” [plastic version of Luger or high power wooden holster/stock], a spare “Holster/Stock”, and a VP-70 model Z [semi only]. All perfectly legal.

I discussed the case before here.

Under Fire ain’t looking too hot anymore either. Via Jacob.

Knox County Mayor Mike Ragsdale has had a very rough 24 hours. On the Sunday talk shows the County Mayor was the subject of much speculation concerning whether he could finish the remaining three years of his term. On “Inside Tennessee” panelist and prominent local attorney Don Bosch said Ragsdale’s term would be remembered as “The Lobster that ate Knoxville.” If you have not heard the lobster story more about it here and here.

The biggest surprise was when the head of the Tennessee Conservative Union, Lloyd Daugherty, called for Mayor Ragsdale to resign on Gene Patterson’s show “Tennessee This Week.” Frank Cagle, columnist for the Metro Pulse said the Mayor would not step down voluntarily but might not have a choice if the on going audits turned up more fraudulent charges on county credit cards. Those words would be prophetic in less than 12 hours.

In today’s Halls Shopper News Sandra Clark rates the Ragsdale administration and gives a grade of F in the department of “Making Government better every day.” Sandra Clark writes, “Starting with Tyler Harber flashing his badge at the Copper Cellar and ending with disclosures of P-Card spending yet to come … Ragsdale’s management is a casebook study of what not to do. He made bad hires and supervised them poorly. He handed out purchase cards with little oversight. He divided the world into two groups – friends and enemies. Now the town is laughing about lobster lunches, Princess cruises and the liquor fund. In our land of Oz, Ragsdale is not a wizard, just a little fellow behind a curtain with an expensive suit and two press agents.”

Just when it seemed it could not be a worse 24 hour period Sandra Clark breaks a new story that the County Mayor himself used a county credit card for a medical procedure co-pay. For a colonoscopy of all things. This caused the Mayor’s Communications Director Dwight Van de Vate to have to send an emergency memo on a Sunday night to County Commission members explaining the “mistake”. How does anyone use a Knox County credit card for a medical co-pay? What other mistakes are there?

People want to know when we will get to the bottom of this. As the audits turn up new information on almost a daily basis the office of the County Mayor has become a rudderless ship. Who will be the next to call for the County Mayor to stand down?

AR-15. Joe Biden does not approve.

Here’s the site. Seems it may be down for the count. So, here’s some thoughts on that.

What I do know:

What I suspect (i.e., no proof just a guess – could be wrong but probably not):

My prediction (and I’ll bet a beer on it): The blog will continue without comments or be shut down. After all, their views quickly fall apart when there is actually reasoned discourse and there are challenges to their lies. The long and short of it: We win, they lose. But that seems to be the trend for the last 15 years, don’t it? I mean sure, they keep getting victories in places like MA, CA, and NJ but that’s not so much a big deal since those are pretty much lost causes. But that’s it. They can’t even get their AWB pipe dream in Illinois or MD, which I would have bet were sure things.

SM predicted it but got the timing wrong:

What they (The Brady Campaign) haven’t figured out yet is that their particular brand of propaganda requires endless repeats of the same damn lies until people take their claims as the truth. Letting in dissent from just anyone with a browser would ruin the effect. It can’t last. I’ll give it 48 hours, tops, until they put some kind of moderation in place.

More at SM:

With that message, they have closed comments on every active post. It seems pretty clear to everyone what change #1 is going to be. I would imagine that the comments onslaught would continue over on Huffington Post, but I note that Paul’s last two entries have not been crossposted.

PGP says:

As you may have heard, apparently they’re tired of getting shellacked on their own blogsite, so…the solution is turn off the comments! Funny!

Sebastian:

We wish the Brady’s the best of luck with their new and improved blog, that no one will read now.

Bitter’s looking at the Violence Policy Center’s finances and notes their revenue and net assets are dropping. Well, their revenue is likely down because people who donate to a cause expect some results and the VPC has had none. Also, I don’t think the decrease in net assets is indicative of much. After all, people don’t like their causes sitting on cash. They like it spent. Seems they’re having trouble getting contributions. I wonder if Joyce dropped their grant dollars.

Most of their expenses are related to salaries and benefits. And they have quite a few employees that make enough to qualify to be disclosed on their 990. At first, I thought this was odd for a non-profit but, once I thought about it, it is not for activists who don’t really provide any service (of course, the VPC provides nothing but the occasional pants-shitting media quote about how we’re all gonna die at the hands of evil Saturday night special 50 caliber assault sniper weapon rifle handgun automatic semi-automatic bullet hose designed for spray firing from the hip at targets four miles away^tm.

And Mark Karlin is on their board? Where have I heard that name before? Oh, yeah.

At least she’s narrowed it down but go offer some input.

The Olympics are in London. One of the sports is shooting. In Britain, they’re afraid of guns and pointy things. But they decide to let people practice anyway, though they have to do so with armed police standing around them. This is, apparently, still too lax for some:

But anti-gun campaigners reacted furiously to the proposed changes, warning that they represented the “thin end of the wedge”, and that the sport would use it to prise out permanent exemptions from the handgun ban.

Oh, England. What happened to you?

Marlin 336.

Heh.

Update: more here.

John Edwards, also known as Mr. Two Americas and the $1200 haircut man, has declared “they want to shut me up.” Mr. Edwards is referring to his message about ending the war and universalizing health care.

That’s nice. He advocates retreat on the War on Terror and socializing heath care.

No word as to who “they” are, but I am guessing the vast Right Wing Conspiracy.

Read the rest of this entry »

Some suggestions. My fave:

Paul’s “Reasoned Discourse” series will be replaced with “Would you mother-f%^ing gun nuts stop correcting me already?“

They’re gonna have some changes. One of those is, apparently, to shut off comments. I’m guessing that’s because there is no better source for pro-gun information than the Brady Blog itself. And, of course, the pro-gun comments outnumber the anti-gun comments by a ginormous margin. And the trackbacks usually make them look like idiots.

Update: In comments, DMeadows notes he predicted it a bit back:

I guess we’ll see what the BC actually does with the blog, but I speculated back on July 1st, in “Reasoned Discourse? – Part II” on the BC blog:

“I wonder if this “Reasoned Discourse” series is actually a strategy to build a pretext for closing the blog to comments or shutting the blog down itself.

“Think about it. This blog could be perceived by the BC as a failed and embarrassing experiment. Gun rights folks far outnumber gun control proponents. The presenting of facts and attempts at rational argument of POV is done far more by pro-rights people. Most of Paul’s blog posts are either about political/legal setbacks or some other negativity for gun control, and few are about successes or big wins for gun control.”

We’ll see.

Seen at the Brady Blog:

That high-powered handgun came from R&B Guns in Hampton, Va., Brooklyn DA Charles Hynes said yesterday.

Paul also says:

It is vitally important that we continue to ask the source of guns used in crimes. The more we learn about the black market in guns, the better our law enforcement agencies will be able to deal with the dangers enhanced by gun traffickers. Knowing where crime guns come from can expose crime patterns, and help shut off sources of crime guns.

So, again Paul, how did they track that handgun to R&B since you’ve spent all that time implying that cannot be done. It’s unpossible!

Or, you know, typical anti-gun bias at CNN:

I was a bit dismayed and a little surprised to hear a CNN Headline News analyst refer to gun owners and “gun nuts” and “Second Amendment literalists” in an offhand comment during a report on the recent TSA report of suspicious activity.

[…]

This is what I found on CNN.com’s transcript archive (emphasis mine).

[…]

This is not simply a transcription error. This is a blatant attempt to cover up an inconvenient gaff.

CNN has had quite a few anti-gun episodes. Such as:

Their youtube video selection.

Then that time when Nancy Grace may have been in possession of an illegal weapon.

Then there was that time a CNN reporter went out and bought a 50 caliber and then mislead their viewers about it because if what they said happened really happened, it would have been a felony. What’s up with these reporters almost committing gun crimes, Steve Bailey?

And then, of course, that time CNN said assault weapons were more powerful than other weapons with a fabricated video. They did correct that gaffe, though.

Me neither:

Of course, I don’t remember hair either.

In Connecticut, gun sales rose after a brutal home invasion left a man’s wife and two daughters dead.

I’ve addressed before how tragedies tend to lead to increases in gun sales (NOLA & 9-11, notably). But never have I heard of an individual crime leading to that.

David on Fincher:

If every one of us did what Fincher did, there would be no more gun control laws in this country.

I disagree. Look no further than the war on drugs. It continues despite high numbers of drug dealers, high numbers of customers, huge volumes of drugs, and huge amounts of cash. I’m not comparing drug dealers to gun rights folks but noting that volume doesn’t seem to dissuade enforcement types. After all, they have nothing but time and your money to spend. David also notes:

Because we will not stand up en masse, any one of us who does will be cut down.

On that, I agree. Gun owners need to unify a bit more.

Do it for the babies.